Known to millions as the creator of the Star Wars series, George Lucas began life in Modesto, California, where he was born on May 14, 1944 to George Walton and Dorothy Ellinore Bomberger Lucas, Sr. His parents owned a retail supplies store and raised Lucas and his three siblings on a walnut ranch.

Eighty miles north of Sacramento, the state’s capitol, Modesto is a sleepy bedroom community surrounded by agriculture and located near the Tuolumne River, bordering the Stanislaus and San Joaquin Rivers. It was here, in this quiet community, where a young Lucas attended Downey High School. Not known for his academic prowess (he was considered a D-plus slacker in school), Lucas’s true love was for racecars and drag racing. In fact, he had aspired to become a drag car racer, but a near fatal accident after he graduated from high school put an end to those dreams.

While attending Modesto Junior College, Lucas discovered another interest: avant garde films. Lucas often attended Canyon Cinema, a roving theater set up by experimental filmmaker Bruce Baille, who toured around the Bay Area, screening the works of avant-garde and underground filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage, Jordan Belson, and Bruce Connor, who shot most of their work on 16mm cameras. Canyon Cinema, which often shared the same stages at local coffeehouses with folksingers and stand-up comedians, inspired Lucas to turn his interest toward filmmaking.

Lucas transferred to the University of California School of Cinematic Arts, which, at the time, was one of the first universities to offer a school devoted to filmmaking. There, Lucas delved even deeper in his interests in experimental and avant-garde films and where he became influenced by filmmaker Lester Novros, who taught a course on Filmic Expression. Filmic Expression, which ecshewed narrative, concentrated on the visual elements of film form such as light, color, movement, time, and space. Another inspiration was Slavko Vorkapich, the dean at USC Film Department and former colleague of Sergei Eisenstein. A montagist who had created many montage scenes for Hollywood studios such as MGM and Paramount, Vorkapich was a great proponent in the belief that moving images in film had an inherently kinetic energy. Other inspirations and influences for Lucas were the cineme verite films and documentaries that were coming out of the National Film Board of Canada.

After earning a B.A. in film at USC in 1967, Lucas became a graduate student in film production, where he made the 13 minute short film THX-1138: 4EB (Electronic Labyrinth). THX, which Lucas would later remake in a longer version in 1971, was a culmination of all of Lucas’s film influences and became what he would later say was a film of social criticism about the pettiness of modern life.

Lucas’s film career began when he earned a scholarship from Warner Brothers, which allowed him to observe the making of a film. That film turned out to be Finigan’s Rainbow, which was directed by USC alumni and budding Hollywood hotshot director Frances Ford Coppola. Considered a god among USC film school students for being a graduate who made “it” in Hollywood, Coppola became a mentor to the younger Lucas. Coppola convinced Lucas that his short THX should be expanded into a feature-length film. With his contacts at Warners, Coppola greased the way for Lucas to begin his career as a film director by talking him up to the studio executives at Warner. During the late sixties and early seventies, after the success of such films as Bonnie and Clyde, studios were in search of the next young, hot, edgy filmmaker who was going to pull the industry out of doldrums after a decade of expensive, bloated productions nearly sent it into bankruptcy.

Baby boomer film audiences, who came of age under the French New Wave and Italian neorealism movements of the “50s and early “60s, were more interested in edgier films than the stilted musicals that Hollywood was regularly serving up. A new wave of film school graduates, who were greatly influenced by these international filmmakers, would soon take over in Hollywood, creating films that during the seventies created some of the most exciting and challenging films ever produced. Coppola was a vanguard of that movement and the studio executives sensed it, if they didn’t quite know what these young, edgy filmmakers had in store for the industry. Therefore, Coppola had a great deal of sway with the Warner Bros. execs and was able to convince them to finance Lucas’s film.

But Lucas’s first foray into Hollywood proved to be disastrous. While Coppola continued to play up Lucas’s film to Warner executives, he told Lucas not to put too much pressure on himself; “[T]hey don’t expect anything.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Warner executives were furious when Lucas screened his finished film for them. It was nothing like they expected. THX, a dystopian science fiction film, heavily influenced by Lucas’s film school inspirations, was long and ponderous-not exactly what the executives were looking for. The executives edited the film to make it more palatable to audiences, thus prompting Lucas to state that they were “cutting the fingers off my baby.” Needless to say, THX bombed at the box office.

Lucas’s early experience with Hollywood was a bitter and hostile one and would influence his thinking about the industry for years to come. Lucas, who considered himself an avant garde artist, turned his back on Hollywood. Though his later films would ironically put the industry back into the financial black, he became an independent producer. In 1971 he set up his own production company, Lucasfilm Ltd. Encouraged by wife Marcia, whom he married in 1969, and who would go on to have a successful career of her own right as a film editor, Lucas decided to turn to more personal inspiration for his next film: American Graffiti.

American Griffiti was inspired by his upbringing in Modesto and his youthful fascination with cars and drag racing. Released in 1973, American Graffiti traded in on the early seventies nostalgia for the 1950s, a period that was for many Americans a time of unabashed innocence. Featuring a soundtrack of 1950s and early “60s songs and a cast of young actors who would go on to become household names, including Ron Howard, Candy Clark, and Richard Dreyfuss, American Graffiti was wildly successful, earning $21.3 million at the box office by 1974. The film also earned a Golden Globe and five Oscar nominations in the Best Supporting Actress (Candy Clark), Screenplay, Director, and Picture categories.

Flushed with the critical and financial success of American Graffiti, Lucas focused his attention on a project that was nearest to his heart. After spending two years writing the bible and screenplay, Lucas went into preproduction for his next movie, Star Wars. After casting Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford in the leads, he shot the film at Elstree Studios in London, England and in Tunisia, Africa. Though Lucas was still embittered by his experience with the Hollywood studios while shooting THX, he set up a deal with 20th Century Fox to partly finance the film, but waived his upfront director”s fees and negotiated for 40% of the box office take and for licensing fees. At the time, Fox might have thought Lucas was bonkers to want licensing fees, since many studios considered them virtually worthless, but this move proved not only to be prescient for Lucas but would also set the stage for the merchandising that created a new set of ancillary profits for Hollywood.

After the film shoot, which was in many ways disastrous (the climate and environment of Tunisia wrecked havoc on the set) and turned Lucas, who saw himself primarily as an editor and cinematographer, off from directing, the movie spent post-production at Lucas’s own visual effects company, Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), which he set up specifically to create the special effects for the film, and Sprocket Systems, an editing and mixing company that would later become Skywalker Sound.

Though at the time of its production no one quite knew what to make of this strange picture with robots, space cowboys, and a thing called “the Force” (even the cast didn’t think the movie would do very well), Star Wars exceeded anyone’s wildest imagination and went on to become a smash hit on its release in 1977. Breaking box office records, Star Wars became an instant classic with American audiences. During the 1970s, auteur directors such as Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Hal Ashby, William Friedkin, and others made smart, edgy, personal, and idiosyncratic films that mirrored the fears, aspirations, and dreams of the baby boomer generation. But after America had emerged from the civil unrest caused by the social and political movements, the Vietnam war, and the Watergate scandal, Americans were weary of the conflict and anxiety of the “60s and wanted to escape to the movies and see pictures that were full of popcorn thrills and “feel-good” sentiment. Star Wars served up audience tastes in big helpings. A mix of 1940s and “50s Saturday morning matinee serials and the hero mythology and Far Eastern mysticism that had been compiled in books by Joseph Campbell, Star Wars offered American audiences a hero to look up to in Luke Skywalker, a simple farmboy whose adventures in outer space thrilled a generation of filmgoers.

Financially, Star Wars proved to be so successful for Lucas that he was able to set up his production company in Marin County, near his native northern California and far away from the trappings of Hollywood. From 1980 to 1985, he oversaw the construction of the facilities he named Skywalker Ranch. His companies ILM and Skywalker Sound, which was later named THX after his first major film, became highly sought-after and respected production companies in Hollywood, doing special effects and sound mixing for many films. After merchandising Star Wars with action figures, lunch boxes, bedsheets, and the like, Lucas’s earlier licensing fees paid off handsomely, thus inspiring Hollywood to see dollar signs in other such merchandising deals. The films leads, particularly Harrison Ford, became household names and later went on to have successful film careers.

Critically, Star Wars won seven Oscars, including Best Art-Set Direction, Costume Design, Visual Effects, Film Editing, Original Score, and Sound, while earning nominations for Best Original Screenplay, Best Picture, a director’s nod for Lucas, and Best Supporting Actor nod for Sir Alec Guiness, who played Obi Wan Kenobi.

The success of Star Wars also led to two more successful sequels (The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) and three prequels (The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith), the first of which brought Lucas back into the director’s chair.

In 1981, Lucas collaborated with colleague and friend Steven Spielberg to produce another successful film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, starring Harrison Ford. Raiders also led to successful sequels and created an indelible character in Indiana Jones. Indy Jones proved to be successful on the small screen as well when Lucas produced a television series, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, during the early 1990s, becoming a cult hit with fans. During this period, Lucas kept himself busy producing and executive producing many films, including Coppola’s Tucker: The Man and Dream (1988), Ron Howard’s Willow (1988), and Labyrinth (1986), among others.

Though Lucas’s career was on the upswing, his personal life didn’t always fare as well. After adopting a daughter Amanda in 1981, he and his wife Marcia divorced. Lucas went on to adopt two other children. He had a long relationship with singer Linda Ronstadt and was at one point even engaged to her. Outside of film production, Lucas has been involved in numerous charities and foundations, including the George Lucas Education Foundation, which he founded in 1991 to encourage academic innovation. He’s also the Chairman of the Board on the foundation. In 1992, he was awarded the Irving Thalberg Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 2005, he donated $1 million to the construction of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Last year, he donated an unprecedented $175 million to his alma mater USC to expand its film school.

Currently, Lucas, along with longtime collaborator Spielberg, completed the next Indiana Jones installation to be released later in 2008.